NASCAR races have been named after many things — car-care products, restaurants, even movies. For the past several years, races at Richmond have been named after people. Saturday night’s race will be named after twins in the Crown Royal Presents the Matthew & Daniel Hansen 400.

Matthew is a Marine. Daniel died as one in Afghanistan. Matt Kenseth, who drives the Crown Royal No. 17 Ford for Roush Fenway Racing, talked about this weekend’s event.

Q: You’ve been involved a lot of promotions over the years. Why is this one special?

A: The most special thing about this one is that Crown Royal names the race after military members, honors military members. There’s always somebody out there fighting for our freedom, no matter whether we think there’s a current (war) going on or not. Whenever you can honor these guys and learn more about what them and their families go through, I think it’s awesome.

Q: Why were they chosen?

A: Anybody can nominate a family member or friend or someone they serve with. Matthew’s godmother nominated them. They get down to five finalists, and fans can go on Crown Royal’s website or nascar.com and vote on the winners. Matthew lost his brother in Afghanistan, they’re identical twins. So to name the race after him and his brother, it’s pretty neat, the way they wanted to do that.

Q: All sports honor the military. But it’s more prominent in NASCAR. Why do you think that is?

A: There’s a lot of race fans who are military members or former military members. I think race fans are very generous in giving, and we all realize we live in a free country, and there probably wouldn’t be a sport without our military.

Q: Richmond is a popular track among drivers. Is it one of your favorites?

A: I do really enjoy racing there. I think most drivers like it. I think the fans love it. It’s been a good track for us. It’s been a real struggle since we went to the COT car. But it seems like we keep getting a little bit better. I’m really looking forward to going there this weekend. It’s probably the most I’ve looked forward to it since they introduced the COT car.

Q: How come?

A: We’ve been getting better on the flatter short tracks. At Martinsville, we had a really good car. I messed up and got a penalty on the first lap but battled back from that all day and ended up getting a decent finish. Carl (Edwards, his Roush teammate) has been extremely fast at Phoenix the last couple races. I feel like we really improved our program a lot and our cars should be better at those tracks. I’m looking forward to getting there and seeing how the improvement we think we made translates to the racetrack.